Ed Wood

I watched Ed Wood the other night on pay-per-view TV - I'd seen it before quite a while ago, but fancied it again, and anyway, to be honest, I don't need much of an excuse to watch a Johnny Depp/Tim Burton film.
It's a subject ready-made for a film - the story of the least-successful, least regarded film director in cinema history. I'm sure there were plenty of others as bad, but Ed Wood is nearly always singled out, and his Plan 9 From Outer Space regularly tops the charts as worst film ever made.
Wood's exotic personality helped - he was a transvestite, with an absurdly inflated opinion of his own film-making talents, but Depp plays him as one of nature's innocents, with a delightful lack of self-awareness. When confronted with a setback (which happens frequently), he gazes into the middle distance, then a wide-eyed smile lights up his face as he thinks of a solution. He clearly loves film, but has no concept of what makes great cinema. He gazes in wonder and delight as his hopeless actors speak his dreadful lines. He breathes 'cut', imagining that he's just filmed Citizen Kane, as another excruciating scene is shot.
The cross-dressing scenes could have been difficult, but Depp, who of course looks great in women's clothing, rises to the challenge, portraying Wood's penchant for dressing in women's clothing as a response to any difficulty. He simply feels more comfortable dressed as a woman, and it shows. Only an actor with Depp's obvious self-confidence and daring could pull it off. He's shown time and time again that he's not afraid to go that little bit further. He made the hideous Pirates of the Caribbean franchise as successful as it was, putting the hapless Bloom and Knightley firmly in the shade, where they belonged, by giving the character a life of its own.
Anyway, Ed Wood's a delightful chamber piece and well worth catching again. Special mention to Jeffrey Jones - a character actor who's rarely noticed, but who never fails to illuminate a film no matter how insignificant his part. He first came to my notice as the Emperor Joseph II in Amadeus, with his famous 'too many notes' aside during the first performance of Figaro.
Martin Landau won an Oscar for his heartbreakingly affecting performance as Bela Lugosi and the film is littered with gems. I can't praise it too highly - it's a gem!